Posted 3 years ago on Oct. 21, 2011, 6:38 p.m. EST by SmallBizGuy
(378)
from Savannah, GA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

If you are easily insulted....QUIT READING.

After many days of reading hundred of posts here, most of what I read "flies in the face of logic". I have decided that 99% of the posters here need to extinguish their bongs....or....blow their snotty little conservative noses, and read the following.......

"Corporations hate poor people and love rich people".....your damn right they hate poor people. Corporations hate poor people so much....they wish that there were NO poor people in America. Poor people can't afford to by the corporations products.....so if it was up to the corporations.....everybody would be rich. (That was for you dumb-ass OWS people that think the corporations are trying to "hold down the poor")

"Corporations are hording money because they are evil".......NO....corporations are hording money because of the gyrating economic policies of the "over-schooled".... "under-educated" Harvard graduate that we currently have in office. First comes demand then comes investment and hiring. Otherwise, a corporation will run out of money.....go broke and ALL of the CURRENT employees will be jobless. What part of this simple logic makes your smoked-filled head spin out of control?

This next one is for the "goose-stepping" GOP supporters.

"Lowering taxes on corporations will boost the economy"....Oh Yea? How many tax dollars will that give back to General Electric? NOT A "F"ING DIME. They currently don't pay any taxes. I know what you are thinking (that's the easy part)......you think that if corporation had lower taxes...thus more money to invest...the corporations will invest it.....RIGHT?....WRONG...read the damn paragraph above on why corporations are hording money.

So....where do we go now? I will tell you. We permanently reduce the financial burdens currently placed on the middle class. Ie....electricity taxes....phone taxes....gas taxes.....income taxes....the list is ridiculous, long and expensive. We also lower the standards for qualifying for a refinance of their existing mortgages. This will give them more money to spend, and the ability to budget for the "long-term" (not some bull shit payroll holiday). We sit back and wait for the middle class to pay down some of their debts, and for their house and car to start breaking down so they will be forced to go out and spend money to repair them.

Get real people! Corporations are neither the "curse" nor the "cure". THE MIDDLE CLASS IS WHERE THE SOLUTION LIES.

117 Comments

Corporations love poor people. Poor people will work for very little money, they won't complain when you violate their rights, and they are very easy to take advantage of. It is so easy to make money off of the backs of the poor that I can't imagine why they would want everyone to be rich.

Maybe I should have said that corporations want everybody to be in debt. That way they would have to show up for work no matter what.

Labor is a product. It is the product of LABOR. Free-Markets exist on supply-demand-price ratio balances. If LABOR could reduce the "supply" of labor, or increase the "demand" for labor, then the price for labor (wages) would rise. Just some food-for-thought.

The only thing is, that is not true. If you have ever read "Nickel and Dimed", you know that wages were staying more or less stagnant when the labor pool was razor thin. With the type of boom we were having during the mid-late 90s, and the fact that there were "jobs" everywhere, the poorest workers still did not see a huge increase in pay and certainly not enough to keep up with the increasing cost of living, not to mention the rate of pay increases for the wealthiest. And, before you are tempted to reach for "the poor are just lazy" excuse, just know that the total hours they were working steadily INCREASED, The labor force has been more productive than ever and have gotten less out of it. You said that corporations want people to be rich but the facts of the 1990s proves you wrong.

Not to mention that during that supposed boom of the late 90s, charities were historically maxed out and living on shoestrings because the amount of working poor who could not make ends meet was INCREASING at an alarming rate. These were the same working poor who were working MORE hours at the same time that employment in America was nearly "full".

The fact is, Americans treat their poor worse than any modern nation. Everyone else has lavish welfare states and recognizes that poverty is a function of the economy and a natural outgrowth if capitalism. But in America, nonsensical laws of "economics" make us blame poor people and exonerate the wealthy for poverty. The fact is, corporations write the laws of this nation and skew the playing field by buying off politicians. Unions have been broken, jobs have been moved overseas and not replaced, and the American worker works more hours for LESS money than they did in 1973.

Something is wrong and it is corporate influence in America. If you know the last 40 years of American history, you know that corporations and bankers have taken over the playing field and set all the rules. Privatization of government services, decay of worker rights, reduced taxes on the wealthy, corporate welfare, they all have one thing in common: corporate influence.

If I remember correctly..... it was Obama that raised the cigarette tax....not Phillip Morris. The last affordable pleasure of the poor got "wacked" by the same people that are always claiming to be helping the poor. And, don't argue the health issues of cigarettes when Obama is setting the example.

It won't be long before the middle class will have to dish-out some more of their hard earned dollars to pay for health insurance. I wonder what will have to go first....their house or their food?

Just because someone "says" that they are helping the poor....don't make it so.

You are confusing unemployed poor people with working poor people. Unemployed people complain, while working poor do not. The working poor don't complain because complaining will get them fired.

Corporations hate unemployment, but they love poverty. They want everyone to work for them, but they want them to stay poor. That way they never complain and keep their head down. They'll be too afraid to demand higher wages or better safety conditions or regulations. It's perfect.

Oh hon....most of those workers are unionized and those union bastages demand higher wages and better conditions and regulations and then SUCK the $$ out of the workers paychecks and pay themselves HUGE wages and bribe politicians with it. And the corporations are screwed because if they don't pay up, their "workers" strike.

The working poor who are SMART, keep their heads down and don't complain WHILE they train, go to school, work a second job etc and then QUIT their rat trap jobs and move up and on.

Let's see....of the 14 homes I can see from my front yard, the vast majority of them are inhabited by people who worked two jobs, saved money to attend college (or got good grades so they went for free on scholarship-OR have employers who offer free tuition reimbursement to their employees), got a USEFUL degree in a field where demand is high (so they have the money to pursue their passions in their spare time) bought homes, had families, are raising them to do the same thing, are in very little debt and plan on retiring somewhere comfortable and spending their twilight years with their grandchildren.

That some people choose not to live that dream, or choose to believe it's dead because being a victim is easier than accepting the blame for their own lives, is sad. But it's also a choice.

Your so right John Surma the CEO of US steel wants poeple to be poor so he can control them like zombies. I thought he just wanted to run a succesful business, that Jim Jones MF, Damn that rich evil corporate bastard trying to keep me down.

I think this is a fantastic post. It hurts the movement for us liberals to generalize about "the 1%" as if anyone who has made money in their life did it dishonestly.

"Lowering taxes on corporations will boost the economy" I would add to this that... even if you make corporate tax rates 0.. the incentive to ship jobs over seas, to exploit cheap labor, as an extra avenue of profit IS STILL THERE!

So, you think that I should risk $250,000 & share ALL profits with my employees? All profits come to the investor first, to recoup the $250k.
DUH!
I have earned my right to BE in the 1% & I will NOT share it with you. THE END!
American Dream.
No inheritance here!

If you don't WANT to work? DIE!
Reset the time machine one or two centuries & you find everyone working or they DIE!
Is it okay for the farmer to decide NOT to plant & work his farm and take (Steal) the fruits of his neighbor? NO!!!

I think you are missing the point, We just want an even playing field again, even Greenspan finally admitted in 2008 that he forgot to factor in the Greed Factor into his free markets equation. Is this fair? Let's try this, one I think you can live with:

Furthermore, we also want you to CHANGE the Commodities Future Modernization Act of 2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000 BACK to where it was before 2000, which since has deregulated energy markets and consequently allowed for such scams as The Enron Loophole; whereas in the early 2000's Enron Corp. was charging 250 bucks plus for a kilowatt hour...They all when to jail for this. But, the Enron loophole is still not closed, for example, allowing speculators to resell barrels of oil over and over again before it reaches the gas station owner. It's basically legal gambling at our expense. What were those lawmakers thinking then? What are you thinking now? Either do the right think, or you're part of the 1%."

Why are oil prices high? The Enron Loophole. Former head of U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission speaks to Congress on the high price of oil--and he's not happy about energy deregulations.

Let's get focused and bring back Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, they got it right 1933, we don't need to REINVENT the wheel because bringing this Act back will create an even playing field once again....and let's finally Close the Enron Loophole, which allowed Enron to charge what they wanted for energy; they went to jail for this; but no one closed the loophole, why? Re-election Monies from the banks and oil companies! The writing is on the wall.

Corporate and political world are looking at the world, resources, people with a "profit maximizing, infinite growth paradigm".

In order to replicate the growth of yields during the twentieth century, the global annual crop harvest would have to be boosted nearly sevenfold, an achievement that would imply average yields near or above the photosynthetic maxima even with the greatest possible expansion of the cultivated land with intensive multicropping.

We are all to blame, and no one is to blame, blame is meaningless, it deals with the past which doesn't exist, we have only now. Our pathetic society and it's fantastically bad outcomes are just symptoms of our sickness, crappy imagination. Corporations act like cancer, they expand out of control with no regard, because they have no connection to the earth body. Everything comes from inside us, so start with you and imagine the world you really want, then be that as often as you can.

the root of everything you are talking about is what needs to be considered, Why does human kind feel the need to consume so much?
why do we cling to tribalism in such a small world?
why do we consume more and more to distract our selves from real relationship?
Until we all (everybody all at once) enter a mature consideration about the root cause of humane culture at this point we will not transcend the root issue

Before Microsoft spell checker came out, I was considered TOTALLY ignorant. I failed English "twice" in college. My brain is so one-sided that I list to the right. For me to "go left", I have to turn 270 degrees.

OK, well. Corporations are "hoarding" (saving) money because the world economy is in bad shape. They don't want to go bankrupt if they need to take loss-after-loss for a few years. Ford did the same thing, and GM did not.
As you can tell by public attitude, being bailed out is "bad for business".

I'm going to say that the problem is obvious. The whole culture is based around drugs and alcoholism, spending money on stupid, worthless items and never being prepared for any sort of event.
I think if you look at the Chinese culture; it rewards hard work and shows courage and strength on television, even if it is propaganda. In the American culture, going to the bar and getting drunk, treating people poorly who make less money than you and acting stupid are the trends for the 2000's.

That's the problem. It has nothing to do with Corporations, Wall Street or Government. It has everything to do with too many people trying to live in a Fantasy world, and too many politicians trying to cater to those needs.

Occupy is a great excuse to get together and avoid paying bills or working for a little bit, and it certainly brings some awareness forward. But now you are just wasting time. The only way to stop the system, is to stop putting your time, energy and money into it.

If someone is stealing your money, stop giving it to them. If someone is destroying the environment, stop supporting them. It's difficult to get past the corporation stranglehold, but I'm noticing more brand-name "organic", "preservative free", "free trade", "not tested on animals" etc. products out there. Buying those types of products sends a message about what you want to see from the company. If the company gets busted lying about it; than their PR firm takes a hit and damages their reputation. People sell of their shares.

Corporations are designed for people to invest their money into, so they can profit off the success of the company over the long term.

I don't want more laws, more rules and more restrictions. I'd rather just have fewer laws, fewer rules and a culture and rewards responsibility instead of taking the easy way out and finding an excuse to party every weekend.

I really couldn't give a shit what the corporations want, or what motivates them. I am not some "sensitive" schoolgirl (no offense intended to schoolgirls). All that I want to ensure is that they operate under the laws that our "republic" has established. If they have a "good heart"....well....again.....I couldn't give a shit. Corporations were established to make as much damn profit for their shareholders as they can possibly make. That's good enough for me.

Corporations were established so you could buy shares and 'share' part of the responsibility of owning a corporation. Your wealth would than depend on the actions of the Corporation. The only people who buy into stocks, it seems, are greedy and lazy. And thus; Corporations are greedy and lazy.

With a name like "levelthefield" , I would be a little wary about telling you. However, I will tell you this:

1) I am the CEO of a small manufacturing company.

2) I am old....married....bald.....and not necessarily ugly...but I ain't no box of bon-bons.

3) I "studied" economics in college. But, I learned economics through the "school of hard knocks" (my first start-up went bankrupt when my partner took off with all of the money). I "personally" paid back all of the creditors, even though the bankruptcy court didn't require it.

4) I am now considered (due to my income) to be part of the 1%.

That's about all the info I will give you on my "all work and no play" dull boy life.

Ok this is an oxymoron if I ever heard one..Corporate hates poor people they wish were all rich. What corporation do you work for? Google? Because 99% of us work for corporations that don't even pay sick days or health benefits. Want us to be rich or want us to be cattle? Hey those cows got it made they eat whenever they want they have a roof over their heads and they get to play all day. Then one day Farmer Joe goes over and grinds them up. Something wrong right? No? Oh well that's because your too busy worrying about your own god damn selfishness think big picture that's what OWS is all about.

I'm not offended, and don't see anything particularly wrong about your point of view. However I think you have either mis-characterized the movement, or have filtered out much of what is being said on these forums. Most people I've talked to here over the last week (so 100s of posts, and 1000s of comments) are not against people or companies making money. What people are unifyingly complaining about is crony capitalism (i.e. money buying off our political system). One person, one vote. Not one dollar, one vote. Pretty simple really.

All of the other banter is varying people's opinions with no real consensus. Getting money out of politics and returning our country and government to the people is something almost everyone (if not everyone) I've spoken to at Liberty Plaza and on the forums, agrees on.

Good call. You are absolutely correct about what caused the housing bubble. My proposal would only allow for a reduction in the standards for lending until the economy got back on a roll. Then I would tighten the lending standards to prevent another meltdown. By tightening the lending standards, the Fed could avoid having to raising interest rates to slow down the economy due to inflationary pressures. Adjusting the lending standard is much more "targeted". Just another tool in the tool box.

Until we can get the housing market to recover, we kiss any overall recovery goodbye.

the reason why we can't recover is because america does not produce anything. the idea that consumption alone without production can increase wealth is why we all have accumulated so much debt. if we intend to pay the debt back, we must start producing things that the world actually demands and will compensate us for. extending credit without getting rid of the barriers(regulations) on production will just leave us with more debt than before. the only way we can reduce prices is by increasing competition in price. we need competition not central planing. everyone know that price controls just puts companies out of business... free market competition > government central planning!

FYI......I was reading a trade journal this morning (on the throne). I read an article about China's "plastics" manufacturing sector. The Chinese are starting to shut-down factories due to wage and real estate inflation. The article also mentioned problems with the a strengthening currency. This is bad news for the Chinese manufacturers, but good news for us. Two things are at play here at home. Our labor force is more productive, and our currency is weaker.

As you said....if we can just manufacture something that the world wants, we might see a renewed interest in the manufacturing sector bringing production back to the US.

Ah....so....Obama hater? Tax hater? I think the one thing you need to do is, while you are attempting to get everyone to stop demonizing, stop demonizing Obama or taxes. Those things are just lightning rods for the right wing.

I refuse to be placed in a bottle and stored on any political party's shelf. I did not say that Obama was "evil" for his economic policies. He is just not very well "educated" about economic issues. I actually believe that he has good intentions. I have no evidence to prove otherwise.

They are "gimmicks". Political "gimmicks". Both parties are in the business of "manipulation". Perception is reality. Divide and conquer.......MSNBC -vs- FOX ....... "Two-sides" of the isle......Left -vs- Right.....get the picture? As long as the Democrats and the Republicans can keep the Left and the Right emotionally separated, then all they have to spend their time and money on is the Middle.

It seems to me that most of the people on here have some sort of decent point, but my question is, how are we going to solve this problem by disempowering the 1%, who make the jobs and improve the economy, or by regulating them, in which case ether more jobs will be sent over seas or else they will simply raise the price of products to make up for their loses and WE will eventually pay for it. I would instead propose that we take away their real power, which lies in outsourcing work to countries where it can be done cheaper, the copy rights they hold, and there ability to cope with regulations or avoid them through legal means, and the land they own, and financial power over elections. We could possibly work towards this by:

Reimposing tariffs on incoming goods in the way originally set up by our forefathers and initially intended to be the only source of government income. The purpose of which would be to raise the price of foreign goods to the price of the cheapest comparable American good, and revers the flow of money so that foreign countries are paying us instead of us paying them, as well as creating MILLIONS of jobs

Limiting copy rights so that they last a MAXIMUM of 5 years and are nonrenewable. The supreme court stated that copyrights were created for the purpose of inspiring creativity. 10s of millions of dollars should be more then enough for that. At the moment, you can NOT walk into a store, see something thats interesting, go home, build it, sell it and make a living off it. Imagine what Microsoft would have been like if after 5 years, any person or company who wanted to, could have started developing off the base system, we would have thousands of jobs and several incredible op systems instead of one guy with a copy right monopoly and 10s of billions of dollars. (for any one who thinks this can't work, China operates with NO copyrights at all)

Largely deregulating companies who's top beneficiary is making under 1 million dollars a year would be incredibly helpful. I know a lot of people would not like this and I understand, they have a right to be upset. But the top 1% are making FAR more then this and the regulations we impose on THEM are also imposed on small businesses often making it impossible for them to succeed, where for large ones its ether easy or they have the legal power to ovoid it. I have a friend who runs a landscaping business and he's his only employee. He's not allowed to mow to large a FIELD of grass without getting a more expensive permit then he already has, which is easy for large businesses, while he has a family of 5, a home lone, and is making under $40,000 a year. You should not have to pay so that you can make money.

Opening up land reserves and selling to consumers or especially small companies with development potential. Again I understand opposition to this step, especially from environmentalists, but I don't think people realise just how much land there is. It would take weeks if not months for the best of us to cross just the continental part of our country on foot, and almost all of the country (especially the west) is just open land. When the frontier was closed it destroyed thousands of jobs hit the economy worse. How many of you live in a town that was founded in the las 20 years, 50 years, 100 years? We are not growing any more and need to make wise and reasonable use of our resources. Almost all of which are open are currently controlled by the 1%.

Companies (other inherently political organizations) should not be allowed to donate to candidates at all, considering they cannot possibly represent the views of every person in their company, and personal donations should be limited to 1 million dollars. You can run an entire campaign traveling all over the country on a million dollars. In fact you can live your whole life without working a day quit comfortably on a million dollars. There is no reason any one person should need to donate more then that, elections should be about people not money.

I'm not sher if all or any of this would work, I'm not a politician and I'm not a rich man, in fact I have only a few hundred dollars in everything I own, but I hope this is useful to some one. I would suggest that these things be "carried out" rather then "demanded".

"Corporations hate poor people so much....they wish that there were NO poor people in America. Poor people can't afford to by the corporations products.....so if it was up to the corporations.....everybody would be rich."

Too much of a simplification.

For corporations like eg. WalMart the opposite rule applies. The poorer people are, the fewer will go shopping at more upscale stores and instead decide to go to WalMart (or any other large box store).

Large corporations are not all the same. High tech eg. loves the market to be filled with highly educated people to keep price low, while low tech corps love the market to be filled with lowly educated people to keep prices low.

In either case. The needs of business people should be taken into consideration when making political decisions. They need to be weighed against all other interests.

I agree that the middle class is a part of the solution, but only part. Corporations, in my opinion, are catering to CEO's, upper management and investors too much. The equation is out of balance. In the financial industry BANKSTERS have stacked the deck. They are able to gamble with our money with no downside risk to themselves. If you watched Goldman Sachs, you saw them take the market up and away making billions. When they saw it was going to come down they still sold the shit but took measures enabling them to cash in when it came crashing down. Wasn't 2009 one of their best years? I believe they have been behind every boom and bust since they formed. This is the kind of behavior infecting the financial entities all over the world. It is obvious that they can not control their greed. We have to bring them down before most of us are turned into serfs. Many people in America believe that it can not happen here but they are wrong. It is happening right now. Many of us see it and want to stop the insanity before it all goes up in flames. What is happening in Greece is a harbinger of what will come to America.

I am a "Realist-Capitalist". I don't believe in a "FREE-for-all-MARKET", I believe free-markets should have "balanced" regulations. What Goldman Sachs is doing screws up the markets for all of the other corporations that need capital to function.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -Thomas Jefferson

"Corporations hate poor people so much....they wish that there were NO poor people in America. Poor people can't afford to by the corporations products.....so if it was up to the corporations.....everybody would be rich."

that part is true.

now sprinkle in some greedy ass hats that don't have the companies interest in mind(collapse their own bank) let alone the publics and bam, instant depression. here is the nut of it homie. they used to do this with wage increases but they found debt works much better. by getting all the loans the banks and gov get, this is essentially new cash into the system, driving up inflation. now that sounds bad... at first. but look at the volume in trading? just keeps growing, and if they loose a few percent on the dollar to make it, so what, it's free. the new volume from middle class loans and increases in minimum wage always end up back in the markets while the rest of us have money that actually shrinks in value. so why doesn't this show in currency exchange rates? this is why the fed doesn't want an audit. capitalism works fine, but behind the curtain it's not capitalism at all. it's a trick of inflation, why do you think the markets supported QE3? the only reason QE1-2 got thrue is because it kept the world from seeing the crack in it all. retail has been down, income is down, for the market to climb under these conditions is absurd.

SmallBizGuy, wonder way the Americans are kicked out of Iraq? That's pretty obvious, but the sacrifice of lives and maimed bodies is priceless and the 99% are left on the hook to pay for that war. There are many books that will expose the billions and trillions of many forked dollars over to corporations. Yep... your tax dollars to dude, and the following generation(s) to share. ya "share the wealth?" You are in "DENIAL" because you don't want to face the facts. Why is there such a tremendous epidemic of denialism? The main reason is due to our lack of your understanding of correlation versus causation. The 99% have lost faith in authority and our mistrust of big government, big corporations, oil, weapons manufacturing, and big pharma. Many people have been effected in various ways, thus various views, (posters as you pointed out) but standing united is the key to success. It is very Un-American to protest for the several past decades so it is a new experience. It will evolve quickly and thanks for this forum it will unfold. Please open your eyes. Unemployment is high for reasons like this, and default is pretty much eminent.

Don't get me started on the Iraq war. It's not legal for me to say the things that I would like to say about "Bush" on the Iraq war. To say that I am "NO FAN" of Bush would be the "F"ing understatement of the century.

My concern here is the lack of experience and wisdom of a majority (generalizing) of the OWS group. With a little more "aging" of the OWS population, will come more wisdom and "worldly" experience. I just don't want anything to happen that everyone will regret and have to pay for over a generation.

[-]0 points
by JonFromSLC
(-107)
from West Valley City, UT
3 years ago

I agree. Ragging on Corporations is dumb. They were just successful at making money. What they do with the money is where they start to seem nefarious. (bribing Congress)

People think that businesses shouldn't outsource jobs, but why wouldn't you want to? If you have to pay some American at least $7.50 an hour, or you can pay some company in India to hire 40 people for $50 dollars a day, you'd be out of your MIND to NOT hire the Indians. It makes fiscal and budget sense. It sucks for us, but that's the price you pay for companies trying to squeeze every bit of production out of every dollar.

I think the solution lies in different places. Eliminate the stupid taxes (as you pointed out, electricity, phones, gas, etc) that just drain the budget, raise minimum wage to $10/hr Make it easy for people to get out of the situation they're in if they choose to do so. (Most people aren't late on their mortgages or unemployed) Give people who file for unemployment the option to work on a road crew (picking up trash) for 150% of the unemployment they'd normally get, and they'll get it for 99 weeks. If they choose to not do the road work, they get normal unemployment and only for 52 weeks. I bet unemployment would go down because there ARE jobs out there. I was recently unemployed and found a job in a week. 99+ weeks is ridiculous. Social programs + Fraud waste and abuse + Defense should all be cut back.

You make 2 points that are very much at odds with each other. Raise the min. wage to $10, and you point out it would be stupid to pay $7.50. So that only increases the motivation to outsource. That's why we need tariffs. Free trade is a race to the bottom, don't let any corporatist tell you otherwise.

Thanks for actually getting my point. I was just trying to get everyone to quit bitching and start focusing on some good ideas. 100% of us aren't going anywhere (that's the 99% plus the 1%).....so let's work through the issues.